Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/732

71 6 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE Illinois; President San ford B. Dole and Associate Justice Frear of Hawaii. Justice Frear said over his own signature that he and President Dole desired that the Legislature should have power to authorize woman suffrage but the rest of the commission would not permit it. Miss Susan B. Anthony president, and the Official Board of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, made vigorous objection to this abuse of power, sent a protest to every member of Congress and followed this with petitions officially signed by large associations but to no avail. The Act was approved by President William McKinley April 30, igoo. 1 The women had always exercised great influence in political affairs and the people of Hawaii resented this discrimination but the U. S. Congress then and for years afterwards was adamant in its opposition to woman suffrage anywhere. After the women of Washington, California and Oregon were enfran- chised in 1910-11-12 this resentment found expression among the women of Honolulu in 1912, when they called on Mrs. John W. Dorsett to help them organize a suffrage club. They learned in October that by good fortune Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, would stop there on her way home from a trip around the world and they arranged by wireless messages for her to address a mass meeting at the opera house the one evening she would be there. The audience was large and sympathetic and she learned that every legislative candidate at the approaching election had an- nounced himself in favor of getting the vote for women. She met with the suffrage club and found its constitution modeled on the one recommended by the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She was in touch with the women afterwards and the interest was kept alive. By 1915 the more thoughtful men of the Territory were beginning to feel that its women must be enfranchised. Both political parties declared in favor of asking the U. S. Congress for an Act giving the Hawaiian Legislature authority in this matter and that body itself passed a bill to this effect. This was taken to Washington by the Delegate from the Territory, J. K. Kalanianaole, who presented it but it received no attention. He 1 History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV, pages 325, 343, 346, 446.